


there is never a moment

by andanete



Series: ancient things with new moments [dw] [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Immortality, M/M, Multi, We Die Like Men, a long living spirit and her time traveller, every moment lasts a second and forever with you, no proof reading, she who has many names and no names at all, the ongoing storm, the time lord and their immortal, time travelling, two souls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 11:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17303894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andanete/pseuds/andanete
Summary: for as long as she has lived, beyond the falls and rises of civilization, past the turns of an ever changing world, there is never a moment she is without her doctor.or, this is the story of a long-living spirit and a time-travelling alien.





	there is never a moment

The first time she meets him, she is running away from her village.

As the surviving granddaughter of the Village Matriarch, there was an expectancy that burdens her since birth. A sort of responsibility that was never struck well with her sort of soul. Her mother, may the spirits bless her, often tittered about her runaway tendencies.

She was the sort of girl that never stayed to make pottery nor was she the type to scour for more silkworms. The kind of girl she was an anomaly. She often strayed past the village’s boundaries, gone for days to look, to search. For what, exactly? She was never very certain then and the sentiment still stands true right now. It was why she always come back to the village, succumbing to the Village Matriarch’s teachings and deal with the ons and bouts of the tiny village of a couple dozen.

When she stumbles upon him, him and his strange contraption whose blue is deeper than the storms that sometimes overtook the skies, curiosity overwhelms her. A male for certain, though she was unsure of what sort of creature he was. Pale, paler than the whites of the Village Matriarch’s hair, dressed in fabric she could not quite name, and eyes wide and viridian—nothing like the sharp, narrowed browns of her own eyes. He was walking around the strange contraption, his lips tugged down into a resigned frown. He waved a stick, although she was quite unsure if it was a stick and if it were what a strange stick it was, around it before scrutinizing the item itself.

Strange, she thinks.

She stays there though, watching him. She does not bother to hide, content in observing openly. She had not quite realize that the man had known she was there the moment she walked within vicinity till he looked over his shoulder, lips twisting into what she would call a smile.

“Hello there,” he says, his accent oddly strange in the language that she recognizes. She nearly startles at that, she had not realized that he could speak. “I am the Doctor.”

He does not ask her who she was, though the look in his eyes which twinkle with a sense of familiarity that she only ever sees amongst the people of her village, tells her she does not need to. It takes her minutes to reply, unsure on how to approach the strange male.

“What are you doing?” She finally asks, voice soft against the wind and trees and animals that surround them.

She almost doubts that he heard her but then he replies, eyes crinkling. “Had a bit of a malfunction with my TARDIS here, so I decided to make a quick pit stop to see what’s wrong. Meant to go visit Cleopatra, nasty girl she is but splendid company, but the Space-Time Vortex spat me out here instead. Although, I don’t quite mind where I’m at right now considering.”

Her mind whirls with the words that she does not recognize. TARDIS. Cleopatra. Space. Time. Vortex. Unconsciously she leans a little bit closer, a motion that does not go unnoticed by the strange man who calls himself Doctor. His lips widen further, flashing white teeth.

“So!” He claps his hands together, turning away to look over his strange contraption—TARDIS. “Let’s see what’s the problem here, shall we?”

Before she could even think twice of coming a little closer to the man and his contraption, she can hear her grandmother yelling for her. She glances at where her grandmother, the village, is then back to the Doctor who was staring at her with a strange look in his eyes.

“Go on, then,” he says, not unkindly. “We’ll see each other again.”

He sounds so sure of it that she believes him easily, even though logically, she knew that it was a little more unlikely than so. However, the eye-crinkling smile and the way he mouths silently at her (words, a name perhaps? She doesn’t know for sure) reassures her. She leaves, glancing back at him all the way till his figure grows smaller and smaller as she walks off.

* * *

She meets a witch.

Her name is sweet on her tongue, never uttered louder than whisper for her name was as sacred as the witch herself. She is not quite so beautiful, not like one of the farmer’s oldest daughter, but there was an orphic aura to her that draws her near like a moth to a flame. Hair unique and unlike she has never seen, reminiscent of a wild, bright flame. Eyes alight in colours she’s only ever seen in one individual. Free-spirits come so far and few, especially amongst those in the valley. She relishes in the witch’s presence for as long as she could, in between the times she devotes to her village and the times she devotes to her daughter.

The witch blesses her with a kiss, a name, and an eternity.

She never saw the witch again.

* * *

The next time she sees him, she is far older than she looks.

Her tan skin, burnished by the constant exposure of the sun, remains unwrinkled despite odds. Her hair is still as dark as it had when she was younger, long and treading past her waist. Her face was devoid of the wrinkles she associated with her Village Matriarch and other elderly women. She stays young and she never knows why.

(A sweet voice serenades chants into her ears, hands grasping gently, smiles shared over the herbs of the Yellow River Valley.)

Her village of people were put out by the fact that their Village Matriarch (her, for the previous one had passed away with wrinkled skin and grey hairs that she does not hold despite the fact that old age titters closer each day) never seems to grow old. They call her the loved one, kissed by the immortality of the trees and valleys and rivers. They call her the kind one, hands as healing and kind as sage and ginseng. For, much like the nature that surrounds them, she remains constant against the adversaries of the years.

(This is my promise. You will live, beyond me and beyond everyone else, for you deserve to see the world beyond this valley, beyond the river. And thus time and time will be yours to hold and have, for as long as you need.)

She is old. Older than one such as she, free-spirited and impulsive, deserves. Although the wrinkles of time never wears her appearance, it does at her soul. She is tired. To overlook a village is a responsibility she could no longer bear. Responsibilities were never the sort of thing that her soul likes to deal; it was why she only ever had one child.

(“The mother is dead. Who will take care of her?” Her heart aches and the burden grows heavier but yet, “I will.”)

Her daughter, juvenile in that she was so many decades younger than her, was not quite so ready with the idea of looking over the village either.

However, she never gave her a choice. Much like how the Village Matriarch never gave her a choice either.

Looking back, decades and centuries later, she would wish that she had given her daughter a choice. She would wish that she was not quite so selfish.

But then the strange man, a different man but the same name (his mannerism are different but the look in his eyes, brown this time and not quite as benevolent, are still the same so she never questions) appears before her. A tad lost without his contraption (TARDIS, TARDIS, TARDIS, her mind whispers, ingraining the name into memory) and the decision was far too easily made. The tensions of burdens and responsibilities ease away, disappearing at the sight of the strange man’s jovial grin.

“Oh, hello! Long time no see—!” He stops before he finishes, a word (or perhaps a name?) hangs on the tip of his tongue. It never comes and he just waves.

“Long time indeed,” she inclines her head, smiling shyly. “Where is your…TARDIS, Doctor?” The words taste strange in her tongue but it left her heart warm and she wonders when did she grow so fond of strange things like the Doctor and his contraption.

At the mention of his TARDIS, the Doctor gives a sheepish grin, snatching the back of his neck. “Er… about that, actually, I was wondering if you’ve seen it…”

She raised a brow at that, lips tugging into a smirk. “No, unfortunately, I have not. Would like some help in looking for your lost TARDIS, Doctor?”

“I wouldn’t say lost, but rather, misplaced if you will,” he says, tugging at the cloth in front of him. “I don’t mind having some company in looking for my misplaced TARDIS, however.”

She laughs, freely as she feels. “Of course, Doctor.”

They did not have to go far, the TARDIS was only a couple of miles away. Still, in that time between, the Doctor and her chat about nonsense things like the colours of the land, the pottery that she sometimes dotes her time on, the strange things he mentions. Sometimes it was hard to communicate even though they both understood each other perfectly, there was a barrier that keeps them apart.

The Doctor offers her a trip in his strange contraption. Something in her gut stops her before she could accept—no, not yet—and she shakes her head. He seems to slump in rejection before he smiles again, saying something about how the time will come. She does not understand but she believes him nonetheless. The same look in the other Doctor’s eyes appear in his and it tells her enough.

They part ways, and she wonders if the Doctor is a man of the future.

She never realized the Doctor had, not once, addressed her or asked for her name.

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is the beginnings of one of my works. i do not own Doctor Who or anything. the only thing i own is my original character and this concept i guess.


End file.
